The catfish hole had been mine for years. A bend in the river just past the second bridge on County Road 9, where the current slowed and the water went deep and green. Pull up on the gravel, walk fifty yards downstream past the cottonwoods, and there’s a log that juts out over the dropoff. I’d caught flatheads out of that hole since before I could drive a legal load of beer home from the little gas station two towns over.
Then one July it went dead. Not slow, not “the fish moved deeper.” Dead. Three straight weekends, not a single bite. I threw cut shad, chicken liver, live bluegill, stink bait from a jar, a whole frozen shad I’d saved for a special occasion. Nothing. I got so desperate the fourth weekend I tied on a spinnerbait I found in the bottom of the tackle box, just to feel like I was doing something.
I blamed everything but me. The river was too warm. The water was too clear after the dry June. The bait shop guy sold me old shad. Somebody upstream must’ve netted the whole hole. A buddy of mine even suggested the flatheads had just moved, and I bit his head off about it. You don’t understand, I told him. I’ve fished that hole for years. The fish are there. They have to be there.
The Old Man Who Ruined My Theory
One evening I pulled in and there was a car already parked on the gravel, an old dented Chevy that hadn’t been washed since the Clinton administration. An old fella sat on a folding chair by my log, his rod propped in a forked stick, a coffee thermos on one side and a bucket on the other. I walked down and saw three nice channel cats in the bucket, still moving.
I didn’t want to be rude, but I was sore. I’d just dropped twenty bucks on fresh liver that I was about to throw at a hole that wasn’t producing. We got to talking. He’d been fishing that hole since the seventies, on and off. Caught them steady all summer. “You fish this spot much?” he asked.
“Every weekend for three months,” I said. “Haven’t had a bite.”
He didn’t answer right away. He reeled in, re-baited, and tossed it back out to the same seam by the log where I used to catch them. Then he said the sentence that ended up living in my head rent-free for the next year.
“You fish like a man waiting on something. You gotta fish like you’re late for an appointment.”
What I Actually Was Doing Wrong
I told myself I was doing everything right. I was casting out, letting the bait sit, waiting. Maybe ten minutes. Maybe fifteen. Then I’d reel in, swap bait, cast to a slightly different spot, and wait again.
What I was really doing was baiting the water, not fishing it. The old man watched me for a few minutes and started asking questions that felt like a dentist probing a sore tooth. You got slack in your line? How long you letting it sit before you touch it? You keeping your phone in your pocket? I answered and his eyebrows did that thing where they climb up his forehead like they were trying to escape.
The truth: I had a big bow of slack line between the rod tip and the water, so when a flathead picked up a bait and ran with it, I never felt a thing. I was leaving baits out for fifteen, twenty minutes, long past dead. And my phone was in my hand half the time, because waiting on a catfish is boring and I’d scroll until I forgot I was even fishing.
He didn’t lecture me. He just showed me. Cast to the seam by the log. Keep the line tight enough to feel bottom, but not so tight the current sings through it. Count to forty. If nothing, make a slow half-turn of the handle, let it settle, count again. Stay on it. “Forty casts at one spot,” he said, “will tell you more than four hours of scattered bullshit.”
The First Fish in Four Months
I didn’t catch anything that evening with him. But I watched him land a fourth fish, and I went home with my pride folded up in my pocket.
Next weekend I left the phone in the glove box. I tied on a fresh cut shad and fished exactly one seam, the one by the log, the way he told me. Line just tight enough. Count to forty. Half-turn. Settle. Count. I did it for two hours in the heat, and right at dusk, when the sky went the color of a bruise, the rod buried and something started walking off toward the middle of the river like it owned the place.
It was a flathead. Not the biggest I’d ever caught out of that hole, but a solid thirty-something pounds, and it fought like it was personally offended. When I finally slid it onto the gravel I just sat there breathing hard, looking at it, laughing a little. The fish had never left. They’d been in that hole the whole summer while I threw bait at them and scrolled my phone and blamed the weather.
The problem wasn’t the river, the water temp, the bait shop, or the guy who supposedly netted the hole. The problem was a dumbass on the bank who thought showing up counted as fishing.
I’ve carried that lesson ever since. Not just for catfish. For everything. Waiting on something isn’t the same as working on it. You show up, you pay attention, you put in the casts, you feel the line. Fish like you’re late for an appointment. The fish, and just about everything else worth catching, respects the man who stays on it.